ODIHR must be scrutinized at highest level-chief Russian delegate.

VIENNA, February 20 (Itar-Tass) -- Activities by the Office of
Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) deserve thorough and
detailed scrutiny at the OSCE Council of Foreign Ministers or even at the
OSCE summit, which is to be held in Kazakhstan this year, the deputy
chairman of the State Duma's international affairs committee, Alexander
Kozlovsky, told Itar-Tass in an interview on Friday. In the capacity of
the chief Russian delegate he participated in the just-ended session of
the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.
"The ODIHR fancies it is the cat who walks by himself," he said. "Time
is ripe to tell the ODIHR where its place really is."
The Russian legislator explained he was particularly angry about ODIHR
Director Janez Lenarcic's unmotivated refusal to include a delegation of
CIS observers in the general group of observers from the OSCE
Parliamentary Assembly, the ODIHR and NATO at Ukraine's recent
presidential election. Kozlovsky recalled that the request for including
CIS observers in the common group came from OSCE PA President Joao Soares
and the assembly's leadership.
"However, the ODIHR chiefs, Lenarcic, first and foremost, offered
strong resistance and prevented this," he said.
Kozlovsky said that at Friday's meeting of the OSCE PA committee for
democracy, human rights and humanitarian affairs he asked the ODIHR
director to read out "the number, date or title of the OSCE document that
would offer clear reasons for pooling observers from the OSCE PA, the
ODIHR and NATO but at the same time keeping observers from the CIS out of
that group."
Lenarcic was unable to offer a plausible answer to a direct, clear and
specific question and confined himself to uttering a standard set of
general meaningless phrases, Kozlovsky said.
"The decision against including CIS observers in the general group of
observers has nothing to do with the supremacy of law," the chief Russian
delegate said. "This is a very serious argument in favor of calling the
ODIHR to order at the highest level in the OSCE."

-0-str